2020-01-14 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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Hawaii Game Management Advisory Commission Meeting Minutes – January 14, 2020 ?: Yo, yo, yo... MRH: Hunt without dogs? ?: If I have to but I’d much rather take my dogs... MRH: Rather have a dog? But you hunt without ‘em, yeah? ?: \[Not speaking in mic\] MRH: Right on... That’s a tough guy back there. So I think we have a shared problem cause pigs do eat eggs and when I was going up the mountain when I first started a lot of times we’d come up, you know, right about twilight to go camp out at Puu La’au Cabin and it was always fun to see all the game birds sitting in the grove taking bird dust baths and in my experience, you guys, from when I first started to when I finished – when I’d go up the road there wasn’t as many birds up there anymore and I think you got the same problem that I dot that the pigs are eating your baby birds cause they’ll eat baby birds and eat the eggs and the bird if they can get a hold of it. Yeah. And they also were tearing up all the baby seedlings that we were planting with children on the mountain. Now we figured out a technique to keep planting the trees by putting ‘em right against the trees and in between rocks but it just turned into too much trouble so I’ve moved on to another spot to plant more sandalwood trees. We’ve established on Mauna Kea – 50,000 trees and plants have been planted there. They’re planted both on the Homeland side and on the Kaohe side and in the forest reserve along our run and all the way up our ten and every road has got sandalwood trees and if you just watch as you’re driving the mountain you’ll ‘em poking out. So we’ve succeeded in doing what we’re doing and we’re moving on but I can’t leave the pigs behind that dig up everything that we’ve done. What you might not realize is the pigs will start eating sandalwood saplings when they get about three to four inches across – diameter – they’ll peel the bark off at the base. Now why in the world are the pigs eating the bark off of the trees? Well, it turns out inside of sandalwood is a medicine that helps with the parasites inside of the pigs. So they’re not intentionally trying to do the damage – they’re just using it as their own medicine tree – but they continue to keep gurling it in the same spots – they also, as you guys know, pigs rub their tusks on trees, yeah, so – how am I doing on time with you guys? NP: You’re fine. MRH: OK. So that’s basically what I’m asking if you guys will support legislation introduced to allow pig hunting with dogs on the mountain and no limit on bagging? 18